Greek and Cypriot NOADs’ webinar on what’s new with Open Science in their countries

Overview: The representatives of OpenAIRE in Greece and Cyprus successfully completed the second webinar of the 2023 series reaching 175 attendees who engaged in fruitful discussions. They informed their research communities about the latest activities of their local Open Science initiatives and updated on the progress to adopting a national policy. The webinar highlighted the long lasting role of OpenAIRE infrastructure, services and network of experts (National Open Access Desks - NOADs) in shaping the European Open Science ecosystem, incl. EOSC. Moreover it brought attention to national contributions and collaborations of NOADs to support researchers and policymakers in advancing Open Science within their research ecosystems.

 Ad - hoc National Open Science Committee

OpenAIRE NOAD in Cyprus, Mrs Sylvia Koukounidou from University of Cyprus Library, opened her presentation by mentioning that OpenAIRE has had a pivotal role in the Open Access and Open Science developments in Cyprus since 2009. She gave a brief overview of the policy progress, and how the 2016 "National Open Access Policy on Scientific Information in the Republic of Cyprus" was revised to a National Policy for Open Science in 2022, and how this was achieved with the use of OpenAIRE model policy templates. Today, Sylvia noted that there is the National Open Science Committee (NOSCI) established by the new Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy in the context and contribution of OpenAIRE and NI4OS-Europe project activities. The Deputy Ministry leads the Open Science policy actions and, moreover, envisions that by 2026 the country will have reached immediate Open Access to scientific information, with progress on managing research data and enhancing digital services for research.

The Cypriot NOAD continues to track and support the establishment of Open Science and its aspects in Cyprus. Sylvia closed by giving emphasis to the significant role that the academic libraries have in shaping and aligning national ecosystems for Open Science.

 Hellenic Open Science Initiative

In her presentation representing OpenAIRE in Greece, Ms Elli Papadopoulou from Athena R.C. stressed that the Greek research community is very competitive, even leading, Open Science in Europe, among other things, via OpenAIRE's contribution to Open Science and the EOSC realisation. Moreover, Greek (affiliated) researchers follow Open Science as part of fulfilling their EC grant requirements. But, as Greece lacks a national policy for Open Science, digital competences on data and EOSC remain unnurtured in the Greek research area.

In that respect, the contribution of OpenAIRE in Greece has been incremental on different levels, especially on setting up collaborations that resulted in a local Open Science community and the Hellenic Open Science Initiative (HOSI). The HOSI declares the formal synergy of its 14 member organisations from research, academia and the public in a memorandum that was signed in February 2022. The group had previously synthesized their proposal for the National Open Science Plan, including first actions to adopt Open Science practices and align with EOSC. Today, the activities of HOSI are spread around the three (3) working groups of policies, education and software. The HOSI has good communication with the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation (GSRI) who accepts or rejects their collective suggestions. 

 Community perceptions

The discussions that followed the presentations highlighted participants' perceptions on the impact of embedding Open Science to local research ecosystems. Moreso, participants with involvement in funding agencies expressed their interest to adopt a policy for Open Science. From the menti (image), it became clear that the "Next Day of adopting Open Science policy" enhances the Greek and Cypriot communities with access to scientific information and knowledge sharing, transparency and democracy in research processes and best practices for digital competences.